De Voidhttp://devoid.blogs.heraldtribune.com
The mainstream media's lonely UFO web logFri, 27 Feb 2015 22:34:08 +0000http://wordpress.org/?v=3.5.1hourly1http://wordpress.org/?v=3.5.1When one's cachet expireshttp://devoid.blogs.heraldtribune.com/14355/when-ones-cachet-expires/
http://devoid.blogs.heraldtribune.com/14355/when-ones-cachet-expires/#commentsWhen one's cachet expiresBilly CoxIt’s fascinating to watch how former Canadian Defence Minister Paul Hellyer’s “revelations” about extraterrestrials have evolved, not only in complexity but also on the world media stage. Particularly interesting is how this thing has contorted like a game of telephone from Russia Today to Iran’s semi-official English-language Fars News Agency.

On Sunday, Fars reported that Russia’s Federal Security Service (FSB) had reviewed some 2 million purloined documents from “American ex-patriot” (sic) Edward Snowden and determined they contained smoking-gun evidence of space aliens directing an entire range of U.S. policies. Yeah, it doesn't sound all that far-fetched -- it's getting harder and harder for The Onion and Cracked to mine parody these days; Fars, a reported mouthpiece for Iran's Revolutionary Guard, is evidently muscling in on their turf. In the latest twist, Fars apparently cut-and-pasted much of its ETs-run-America article from a daffy Western web site, which claimed Snowden’s secret documents indicated the “Tall White” aliens supported Nazi Germany with military technology beginning in the 1930s. Hellyer mentioned the Tall Whites in his recent 26-minute interview with Russia Today. He made made no Nazi connections during that Q&A, but the poor guy did claim some ETs were from the Saturn moon “Andromedia,” which, so far as De Void can determine, does not exist on current solar-system maps. Fars claimed Hellyer “confirmed” the existence of America's “secret regime” to Russia’s FSB upon examining Snowden’s documents. After granting an “extensive electronic interview” to FSB, states Fars, Hellyer was then “allowed” to be interviewed by Russia Today, where he curiously avoided discussing the Third Reich’s exploitation of ET assistance with U-boat technology. (De Void wonders how a military power with access to Andromedian war machinery could ever lose a battle, but whatever). Fars went on to report that, by 1945, the aliens had switched allegiances to The Great Satan. (Maybe, given the results in Vietnam and Afghanistan, the secret regime should renegotiate the Andromedia contract.)

Still, given his Russia Today statements about Tall Whites being in cahoots with a “U.S. air force base in Nevada,” Hellyer provided Fars with plenty of material. It's hard to imagine anybody with brains actually taking this stuff seriously; for Western media like The Washington Post, Foreign Policy, and Radio Free Europe, it amounted to amusing diversion. The general consensus is that the Fars piece — illustrated with a clownish montage of Barack Obama with Adolph Hitler — reflected yet another Iranian hard-liner play for hearts and minds in ongoing tensions with moderates.

Unfortunately, it’s probably time somebody nudged Hellyer offstage. As one of the star witnesses for last year’s Citizen Hearing on Disclosure, Hellyer’s high office in Canada may have lent gravitas to that week-long event, but with a conspicuous lack of documentation to back any of his claims, the returns on his authority are not only shriveling but growing counterproductive. He’s obviously had an impressive career of public service to his country. But at age 90, Hellyer’s UFO tales are unintentionally degenerating into clumsy propaganda stunts that merely perpetuate the stigma of The Great Taboo. What a shame if his open-minded efforts to advance the conversation come to be regarded as just more worthless clutter.

]]>January 16, 2014It just sounds so familiarhttp://devoid.blogs.heraldtribune.com/14347/it-just-sounds-so-familiar/
http://devoid.blogs.heraldtribune.com/14347/it-just-sounds-so-familiar/#commentsIt just sounds so familiarBilly CoxFormer Canadian Minister of Defence Paul Hellyer was back in the news again last week by floating the “possibility” of an intersteller war, “especially if we shoot down every UFO that comes into our airspace without asking who they are and what they want.” This time, the audience was Russia Today. Unfortunately, the brief flurry of headlines were mere variations of what the 90-year-old former MP has been saying for the last eight years. Naturally, he got hammered for it — Popular Science said “Hellyer appears to be crazy.” And who's surprised?

As the MoD boss during the 1960s, Hellyer was in a position to know about some of Canada’s most sensitive military operations. And, in fact, during his tenure, in 1961, he was onboard when roughly 50 formation-flying UFOs crossing from Russia into Europe came thisclose to triggering a shooting incident before reversing course and heading back toward the Arctic. That's one hell of a moment. But it was evidently the only encounter that left an impression on him when he was running the show. Fast-forward half a century or so and we find Hellyer under the sway of former U.S. Army Col. Phil Corso’s sloppily constructed and barely sourced The Day After Roswell, a book so fatally flawed that researcher Stan Friedman suspected history would judge it as an outright fraud and forever poison the waters for more responsible research on the 1947 controversy. Hellyer also copped to being influenced by the writings of Alfred Webre, a conspiracy wildman whose zany assertions include how 19-year-old Barack Obama was teleported to Mars as part of a classified CIA program. Webre’s grasp of reality is so skewed he couldn’t even get the name of De Void’s newspaper right a few years ago, even though he made multiple attempts at it.

So here we are, decades later, and Paul Hellyer — a key witness in last year’s controversial Citizen Hearing on Disclosure, long removed from insider status — is alerting the world to the presence of “at least” four species of space aliens, and that some are walking the streets today undetected. And as he told the CHoD in Washington in 2013, the “three sisters” responsible for muzzling the truth — “the Council on Foreign Relations, the Bilderbergers, the Trilateral Commission, the international banking cartel, the oil cartel, members of various intelligence organizations, and select members of the military junta” (which actually comes out to at least seven sisters)— are the ones manipulating reality. And who knows — maybe he’s right. Certainly UFO whistleblowing has come a long way since Roy Thinnes tried to warn a disbelieving world on “The Invaders” in 1967-68. Now there’s a Cabinet-level government official ringing the bells.

But wouldn’t it have been better if Hellyer had something more substantive to fall back on than a resume, something original that couldn’t have come from a book? Wouldn’t it have been gutsier if he’d gotten out in front of 1961 incident the way Dutch Maj. Gen. Wilfried De Brouwer did with the 1989-90 triangle UFO wave? De Brouwer held a press conference and released F-16 radar data to the public. Why aren’t there more of these guys? Why do so many people in key positions, like CIA agent Brandon Chase and Arizona Gov. Fife Symington, have their come-to-Jesus moments ex post facto, years later, instead of when they were in positions to make a difference, back when it might’ve counted? OK, De Void actually knows the answer to that. It takes stones. Still — anything less sounds like tired stale derivative rehash.

]]>January 9, 2014The roots of intelligence?http://devoid.blogs.heraldtribune.com/14332/the-roots-of-intelligence/
http://devoid.blogs.heraldtribune.com/14332/the-roots-of-intelligence/#commentsThe roots of intelligence?Billy CoxWith two-thirds of its neurons distributed not in the brain but throughout its tentacles, the physiology of the extremely savvy octopus isn’t the only Earthly life form that forces us to reassess the nature of perception and intelligence. There’s also the “swarm intelligence” of superorganisms, like ants, in which the individual and competing hierarchies are sacrificed for the efficiency of the horde. There’s a reason ants have been around for more than a hundred million years, and every reason to believe their relentless colonization will continue long after we’re gone.

Renowned myrmecologist Mark Moffett compares the phenomenon to “a kind of live computer, with crawling bits for its wits,” whose perpetuation appears secure because “neither ant colonies nor supercomputers need consciousness to make smart choices.” Adds the research associate for the National Museum of Natural History, “It doesn't pay to consolidate power; better to have redundant operations with few or no established commands, as ants do."

If, as it appears, some form of intelligence, fused with high technology, lies at the heart of the UFO puzzle, why must all forms of intelligence mirror our own? Ants always come to mind when De Void hears the question: “If UFOs are real, why don’t they land on the White House lawn?” If leaderless superorganisms are part of the mix, a take-me-to-your-leader scenario simply doesn't compute. And the inter-species communication conundrum got even more puzzling recently after spending a little time with a provocative New Yorker magazine article, “The Intelligent Plant.” This one makes our as-yet-unsuccessful two-way conversations with dolphins look like a walk in the park.

Botanists are bitterly divided over the term “plant neurobiology,” which at least one source describes as “sophisticated behaviors observed in plants [that] cannot at present be completely explained by familiar genetic and biochemical mechanisms.” In that vacuum, one might confer intelligence onto the mystery. But given how plants show no evidence of neurons, brains or central nervous systems, the bias against the concept of intelligent flora is ostensibly well founded.

However, a small but growing community of botanists is making the case for plant intelligence resembling swarm behavior in (gulp) ant colonies. Employing electrical and chemical signaling, equipped with between 15 and 20 senses, exhibiting stress behaviors and inviting suggestions of echolocation without a central command center, plants — sedentary and nonambulatory though they are — may also be alerting researchers to the limitations of “cerebrocentric” intelligence. In fact, the data is already inspiring theoretical computer modeling based on “the distributed computing performed by thousands of roots processing a vast number of environmental variables.” One of these project collaborators is Italian plant physiologist Stefano Mancuso, who has worked with the European Space Agency on plant behavior in extreme environments and managed to get some experiments aboard a space shuttle mission in 2011.

Mancuso told the New Yorker that a fuller comprehension of plants “would be like being in contact with an alien culture. But we could have all the advantages of that contact without any of the problems — because it doesn’t want to destroy us.”

Maybe not. But forget domination and conquest; a simpler question is, how does one even begin to interpret torrents of information from a superorganism whose interactions with its environment in no way reflects our own? Plants may work off a completely different time dimension from ours, they may appear static, but as this time-lapse video indicates, they are plenty capable of active, intentional behaviors. Plants may be glacially slow, but as writer Michael Pollan points out, they dominate our planet with 99 percent of Earth’s biomass. There’s a reason for that - and perhaps, as well, a cautionary note about attempting to extrapolate the motives of UFOs from our own limited experiences.

]]>January 3, 20142013: More dust from the wellhttp://devoid.blogs.heraldtribune.com/14317/2013-more-dust-from-the-well/
http://devoid.blogs.heraldtribune.com/14317/2013-more-dust-from-the-well/#comments2013: More dust from the wellBilly CoxRecapping some highlights of the mainstream media’s 2013 UFO coverage:

In March, just for the hell of it, apparently, the FBI issued a press release proclaiming how an innocuous, disregarded, single-page squib on an alleged UFO crash in 1950, declassified in 1978, is the most popular document sitting in its two-year-old online “Vault” archives. Wide-eyed newsies at Fox, NBC, Wired, Time.com and others went into scramble mode and treated it like breaking news on a chemical fire.

In August, the CIA conceded the existence of Area 51 in a report about the development of the U-2 spy plane. American movie-goers discovered the top-secret Nevada airbase from the 1996 blockbuster “Independence Day,” but the New York Times, USA Today, CNN, et al, ran with the “scoop” like Paul Revere through the streets of Boston. An Associated Press reporter wrote that “UFO buffs and believers in space aliens are celebrating” but provided no details about the size, location or nature of said merriment, nor the name of a single reveler.

At a Center for UFO Research conference in Greensboro, N.C., in June, speakers included leaders from the French equivalent of NASA and Chile’s counterpart to America’s FAA. Both of those official government agencies continue to collect UFO data from military and civilian sources. The New York Times, USA Today, CNN, et al, were no-shows.

UFO activist Stephen Bassett organized a mock congressional panel in Washington called Citizen Hearing on Disclosure in late April/early May. Its mission statement held that “an extraterrestrial presence [is] engaging the human race.” The media turned out en masse. Coverage excerpts: “Extraterrestrials. As in little green men,” (Washington Post); from the San Jose Mercury News to a former California representative on the hearing panel: “Lynn Woolsey. Phone home”; “Only little green men at National Press Club are dead presidents on $20,000 honorarium paid to committee members,” (The Guardian); “Space Cadets Hit D.C.,” (New York Daily News). Prior to the conference, Bassett predicted “We’ll create so much public interest, a lot of the editors are gonna say, Christ almighty, enough is enough, that’s it, let’s get some answers from these guys.” Media interest dissolved immediately thereafter, like ice cream in July.

Al Jazeera debuted widely across the U.S. in 2013 with the promo: “There’s more to it. Change the way you look at news. Get more depth, more perspectives, every day.” AJ’s perspective-changing coverage of UFOs crested with a 2-minute 30-second blurb from Bassett’s Citizen Hearing. Although the Pentagon dismissed the iconic 1947 Roswell Incident, noted AJ's standup blow-dry, “the FBI has confirmed that in 1950, it passed on a report” — flash to an image of the same tired old FBI document declassified 35 years ago — “of three flying saucers recovered in New Mexico.” More depth, more perspectives, EVERY day. Exit line from the Citizen Hearing spot: The White House may have ignored public appeals for a new investigation of UFOs, but “that won’t stop a small but vocal few from maintaining that the truth is out there.”

Good god. De Void has more items on the list, but what's the point? Enough already, I'm done with 2013. Just shoot me.

]]>December 31, 2013For when you're out of ideashttp://devoid.blogs.heraldtribune.com/14304/roswell-dirt/
http://devoid.blogs.heraldtribune.com/14304/roswell-dirt/#commentsFor when you're out of ideasBilly CoxSo this is Christmas, and what have you done? Here’s what I’ve done. I’ve decided I’ve pretty much had it with wracking my brain trying to please the whole world, about Christmas and everything else. Jeeeeez, what can I say, do, write, give or share so that nobody will haaate me? My own father, right? Christmas gifts sitting in the back of his closet from five years ago, still in the original cellophane.

So I’m done with trying to figure it out. From now on, one size fits all, brother. Everyone’s getting dirt. But not just any dirt. This is called “Roswell UFO Crash Site Soil,” six grams worth in a plastic bag, with a “Certificate of Authenticity,” for only $12.95. “Hey, Billy, can you —” "Sorry, man, I'm not interested in anything you have to say — but here, have some dirt.” And they’ll go away fascinated instead of insulted because, well, it’s from Roswell. It’s even reddish and looks like it came from Mars.

This stroke of genius comes courtesy of John Iovine, who runs Images Scientific Instruments Inc. on Staten Island. It’s been on the market for a couple of years now, and sales always pick up around Yuletide. Iovine says he got the idea from a guy who scooped dirt from the graves of famous singers and sold quantities of dead-celebrity earth by the vial.

“I thought that was interesting so I hired people to go to the crash site near Corona,” says Iovine. “They came back with about 20 pounds of soil and it does pretty well on Christmas. We also bundle it with [UFO] books.”

By the way. Not that I’m interested in giving these to anyone because dirt’s about all I’m good for right now. But Iovine also sells UFO-02 Detectors. Really. With small magnetometers on constant alert, the Detectors respond to transient magnetic disturbances by flashing LED lights. Iovine describes the initial versions as “elaborate, with brass and a lot of craftsmanship,” but at $200 a shot they didn’t do much traffic. The latest generation runs for $49.58 apiece assembled. Sales are on the uptick but Iovine is still waiting for confirmation of that first UFO sighting.

That's definitely something that's not on anyone's whiteboard now, so maybe there's a way to work that theme into a stocking stuffer next year. But for that special someone who (supposedly) has everything, I'm totally sold on Roswell dirt.

]]>December 23, 2013If I were Putinhttp://devoid.blogs.heraldtribune.com/14283/if-i-were-putin/
http://devoid.blogs.heraldtribune.com/14283/if-i-were-putin/#commentsIf I were PutinBilly CoxThe New York Times recently commended John Podesta for joining President Obama’s team in the White House, with hopes that the former Clinton chief of staff can give a boost to the Environmental Protection Agency and the Interior Department. “His very presence,” stated the Times, “could influence Mr. Obama’s thinking on the proposed pipeline from Canada’s oil sands ...”

Podesta’s very presence could also give the GOP the ammo it needs to gunk up Obama’s best intentions, if it chooses to play a potentially risky card. And why wouldn’t they? This is the least risk-averse group of representatives since the U.S. Civil War; in a game of highway chicken, these guys don't even leave skid marks, just shredded asphalt and twisted debris tinseled in the trees. In this case, of course, the wild card is Podesta’s outspoken and well-publicized advocacy for UFO disclosure. This is The Great Taboo, the elephant in the room, and of course the administration knows it. The Internet was sizzling with speculation and innuendo last week over the announcement, with the fringes encouraging Podesta to man up to his exhortations from 2002.

Assuming Podesta’s appointment is on the level — i.e., greenery only, no hidden agenda — Obama can be certain that neither the Times nor the Washington echo chamber will pose serious questions to him or Podesta about UFOs. Maybe a jokey little softball here or there, certainly nothing involving informed and sustained followups. But what about the foreign press corps? More specifically, what might Vladimir Putin do to put a wedgie on his American adversary?

On Dec. 9, like any insecure power-monger, the former KGB agent cleaned house with state-owned Ria Novosti and Voice Of Russia radio and announced he was rolling them into one giant machine called Russia Today. Although both entities were conceived during the Stalinist era, their recent independent impulses for covering real news were evidently too much for Putin’s version of democracy. And on Monday, proving they’re more plugged in to Podesta's radioactive interests than the U.S. mainstream media is, Voice Of Russia led its Podesta appointment coverage with his stance on The Great Taboo, and sprinkled the story with quotes from his introduction to Leslie Kean’s 2010 New York Times bestseller UFOs: Generals, Pilots and Government Officials Go on the Record. VOR ended it this way:

“Obama, whose approval rating fell 5% in October to below 50%, may well consider releasing UFO files as a nice way to prop up his sagging popularity.”

Exactly how a sober conversation on UFOs might affect poll numbers is anyone's guess. But this much is true: American media are a docile bunch when it comes to the Great Taboo; foreign press, on the other hand, is a question mark. Germany and France have media seats in the White House Press Corps, and of course there’s Al Jazeera. Who'll be the first to ask the administration if Podesta will be allowed to walk the walk? If I were Putin — and I’m not (yet) — I’d get VOR credentialed and onto the firing line ASAP, just to watch the contortions.

Podesta is on solid ground in supporting Kean’s call for a modest government entity to cooperate with other countries already investigating UFOs. As the former counsel to the Senate Judiciary Committee wrote, “This new agency would handle the release of documents and any future investigations with openness and efficiency,” adding: “It is definitely time for government, scientists, and aviation experts to work together.”

Well yeah. And long overdue. Unfortunately, this makes too much sense for an intelligent Beltway dialogue, and Putin is smart enough to know that. And with another godawful election cycle about to puke oceans of money all over craven incumbents and aspiring sellouts alike, imagine the fate awaiting Obama’s point man on the environment. One awkward sound bite on UFOs, one Dennis Kucinich-type moment, and it’s Little Green Men 24/7, red meat for Fox News, Limbaugh, the usual suspects. One hopes the White House has a contingency plan on standby. The best plan would be to get out in front of it. But that’s not how things work around here.

]]>December 17, 2013Attention David Lynchhttp://devoid.blogs.heraldtribune.com/14276/attention-david-lynch/
http://devoid.blogs.heraldtribune.com/14276/attention-david-lynch/#commentsAttention David LynchBilly CoxBy simply remembering their names, history rewards those who prevail against conventional wisdom and expose the experts for whiny laggards. Heinrich Schliemann, who discovered the fabled ruins of Troy, and George Clark, who discovered dodo bones after the extinct birds had been relegated to myth, were once dismissed as flakes. And for every Schliemann and Clark, there are countless Lloyd Pyes for whom time simply runs out.

Lloyd’s number came up far too soon Monday, at age 67, and well short of his stated destination of rewriting human history. But what an amazing, quixotic journey for the native Louisianan and his 14-year companion, a nine-century-old skull he called Starchild. On the playing field of human endeavor, the former running back for Tulane surely rates a few cheers for tenacity.

I met Lloyd in Metarie in 1999. He lived in a one-bedroom apartment and drove a beat-up Buick Roadmaster whose odometer indicated it was just a few thousand miles shy of Earth to the moon. He was smart, intense and funny, with a self-deprecating drawl that belied a fierce command of arcane vocabularies, from arthrology to cryptozoology. And so much for corporate ladders and the psychology degree. “I couldn’t see myself listening to people piss and moan all day long,” he said of his career choices, “and I’m not enough of a materialist or a humanitarian to go into law or medicine.”

Instead, Lloyd pursued the missing links in human evolution. The obsession led him into the fog of Bigfoot and Zecharia Sitchin and the Mesopotamian Anunnaki and planet Nibiru. He rejected Creationism and Darwinism for another option called Interventionalism. He had just published the audaciously titled Everything You Know is Wrong. Then suddenly, a bolt from the blue — Lloyd found himself in possession of two apparently Pre-Columbian skulls. Kismet. It was almost too good to be true. One was so egregiously deformed he theorized it could be that of an alien being, or no less than a hybrid. The details are available at his web site. And yet, Starchild struck a universal and totally human chord.

“All my life,” he said, “I’ve wanted to do something that wasn’t just different, but something with value, something with meaning.” Maybe Starchild was the smoking gun. If only he could prove it. But that would take big bucks. And, to paraphrase Clint Eastwood, Lloyd Pye was a man who knew his limitations. “Truthfully,” he admitted, “my fundraising skills are so sparse, I’m not sure I could raise dust on a dirt farm.”

Lloyd spent the next 14 years consulting with scientists, labs, and investors on a see-saw of dashed hopes and dead ends, glimmers of hope and second wind. Cautiously baffled expert opinion on Starchild ranged from neuromuscular freak to cradleboarded hydrocephalic. And then, in February, the last time I saw Lloyd, he rolled into Sarasota with his girlfriend Vivienne, trumpeting a breakthrough: He’d found a sugar daddy in Tampa willing to start a foundation to subject Starchild to the pricey rigors of a Genome Sequencer. It was the best chance of resolving the DNA mystery once and for all.

But there was a problem — Wikipedia.

Lloyd said Wiki’s “Starchild skull” entry, created by a Yale Medical School neurologist and member of the New England Skeptics Society, was outdated, incomplete, and misleading. Potential investors for whom Wikipedia might be their only exposure to the controversy would likely walk away after a quick read. Particularly galling to him was this line: “[Pye and an associate] claim that they have consulted with 50 experts (whom they will not disclose) yet not one of the experts was able to adequately explain the Starchild’s appearance on the basis of a natural deformity.” But that clearly wasn’t true. Lloyd’s website listed at least 10 medical professionals who’d analyzed the skull — pediatricians, radiologists, ophthalmologists, neurocranial plastic surgeons. Lloyd's attempts to get the Wiki info corrected were futile. There wasn’t much De Void could do but blog about it.

And that was pretty much it, until July, when Lloyd sent out an email blast saying he’d been diagnosed with inoperable stomach cancer, and that he was heading to Europe for alternative therapies. But when his travels ended a few days ago, he was back where he started, in Louisiana, with family.

It’s not clear what happens to the Starchild Project now, but it’s safe to say the orphaned skull will never have a more passionate or colorful advocate. Maybe, coming as it did before serious DNA mapping could begin, Lloyd’s death spared him the ultimate blow. When I asked what it would mean for him if Starchild turned out to be human, he just sighed. “I’m a blowed-up peckerwood, that’s all there is to say. I’m as low or lower than when I started. It’s going to be really, really bad.”

So, Lloyd, wherever you are, take a bow. The road less traveled is full of thorns and snakes, but you made the trip anyway, without a flashlight, without a map, trusting yourself — as Kipling wrote — when all men doubt you. It may not be good enough for history, but it’s good enough for now. Rest in peace.

Oh, and p.s.: That Wikipedia error you were pissed about? It’s been deleted.

]]>December 12, 2013Can they go home NOW, please?http://devoid.blogs.heraldtribune.com/14268/fortunately-no-one-was-injured/
http://devoid.blogs.heraldtribune.com/14268/fortunately-no-one-was-injured/#commentsCan they go home NOW, please?Billy CoxWe don’t need another example of how desperately partisan Capitol Hill has become. We really don’t. But this week, even when the most futile and least popular Congress in American memory swerved off-script and managed to do something legitimately interesting, it all went in the ditch. And folks, this is a big reason scientists are reluctant to subject edgy new ideas to scrutiny from the Beltway hacks.

The occasion was Wednesday's House Science Committee hearing, called “Astrobiology: The Search for Biosignatures in Our Solar System and Beyond” and chaired by Rep. Lamar Smith, R-Tex. Truthfully, it wasn’t all that edgy, either. Not anymore. Considering the Exoplanet Data Explorer has confirmed the existence of 755 planets outside our solar system, with another 3,470 Kepler-identified candidates awaiting analysis, this one was actually a no-brainer. Especially given the fact that just one day before panelists convened, Hubble Space Telescope researchers announced the discovery of five exoplanets that emit “a very clear signal” for water.

Two astrobiologists and one planetary physics professor — NASA’s Mary Voytek, historian Steven Dick of the Library of Congress, and MIT’s Sara Seager — spent 90 minutes lobbying for more investment in technology capable of detecting “biosignatures” from distant planets. Since these sorts of looking-beyond-the-obvious discussions don’t happen all that often around here, congressional sponsors quite naturally had to initiate them with a little levity. As Rep. Ralph Hall, R-Tex., asked, “Do you think there’s life out there, and are they studying us? And what do they think about New York City?”

Ha. Good one. Check.

But seriously, OK, all joking aside, just to reassure her Republican audience The Great Taboo was off the table, Seager felt compelled to spell it out: “[Astrobiology] is a legitimate science now. We're not looking for aliens or searching for UFOs."

Whew! Got it. Check.

That said, the hearing moved along smoothly without a lot of people saying stupid things, according to reports. But afterwards, backstage, things reverted to form. This time it came from the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, which accused Republicans of wasting time on “space aliens” instead of doing immigration reform and minimum wages.

From DCCC national press secretary Emily Bittner: “No wonder the American people think this Republican Congress is from another planet — they’re more interested in life in space than American lives. Saying this Republican Congress has misplaced priorities is an understatement of galactic proportions.”

With cliches like that, Bittner could land a job as Weekend UFO Reporter for any number of secondary-market network affiliates. Bittner manufactured her disingenuous outrage over the idea that the obstructionist 113th Congress held “space alien” hearings with just a week left before Christmas recess. As if, you know, these anarchists had any intention at all of accomplishing anything between now and then. Please, lady -- put a cork in it. Nevertheless, Huffington Post’s headline writers took the bait and went with “Spacing Out: House Holds Hearing on Aliens As Session Dwindles.”

Good god. The “Astrobiology” panelists didn’t even remotely wander into radical terrain. Anyone care to guess what would’ve happened if one of the House members had asked Steven Dick to elaborate on his published theory of “post-biological” ET robotic probes reconnoitering the universe? It wouldn’t matter which party controlled the floor. By time the opposition and the media were done, nobody who listened to it would have any brains left, man.

]]>December 5, 2013Hall of mirrors, cont'd.http://devoid.blogs.heraldtribune.com/14260/hall-of-mirrors-contd/
http://devoid.blogs.heraldtribune.com/14260/hall-of-mirrors-contd/#commentsHall of mirrors, cont'd.Billy CoxThe continuing effort to sweep the last few particles of Roswell-crash testimony into the anecdote bin took an especially poignant twist this week when researcher Tony Bragalia published an update on a surprising source — Nathan Twining, Jr. For simplicity’s sake, we’ll call him by his nickname, Nate.

The Twining name has unique resonance in America’s early UFO archives. Nate’s father was a four-star Air Force general who ran Air Materiel Command at Wright Patterson AFB immediately after World War II; President Eisenhower would eventually name him Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. On Sept. 23, 1947, two months after the Roswell incident, in what would become known as the “Twining memo,” the general would lay the groundwork for America’s official study of UFOs. While allowing for the “possibility that some of the incidents may be caused by natural phenomena,” Twining’s note to Brig. Gen. George Schulgen in Washington also described reports of dome-shaped metallic objects with outrageous speed and maneuverability. “The phenomenon reported is real and not something visionary or fictious,” he wrote. Historians have been debating the letter's significance ever since. Twining died in 1982.

A few days ago, Bragalia reported that, six weeks before his death, the general told Nate that the Roswell crash involved the recovery of extraterrestrial bodies, including a survivor. Alien-cadaver reports form a longstanding part of the Roswell lore, but if Twining actually confirmed that, it’d obviously be huge. Unfortunately, the named sources are all second-hand. As for Nate himself — well, the octogenarian is still alive, but he reportedly suffers from dementia in a Baltimore retirement home. In fact, over the summer, a Maryland attorney was portraying Nate Twining as a victim of “possible elderly abuse,” which included “allegations of possible physical abuse, neglect, kidnapping, false and suppressed testimony.” A tragic golden-years story, to be sure.

To this dispiriting tale comes yet another twist from Roswell gumshoes Tom Carey and Don Schmitt. They met Twining, Jr., some 15 years ago, when he was in clear command of his faculties and living in Albuquerque, N.M. According to Carey, Nate was a wealthy and genial host who enjoyed staging lavish dinners for prospective investors in land deals. Better yet, having seen UFOs himself, Nate was keenly interested in the subject. Yet, when the authors of 2009’s Witness To Roswell pressed him point-blank for details concerning his father’s Roswell revelations, Nate gave them nothing.

“General Twining would certainly have been in a position to know about it since he was with Wright-Pat’s Foreign Technology Division,” Carey tells De Void. “But Nate said he didn’t have any information on Roswell because his dad never discussed it with him. I was I was very surprised, of course.”

“Of course” because Carey had received two letters, years apart, from two women, strangers to each other, both of whom informed him that Nate had shared his father’s alleged alien-body story with each of them. “What surprised me,” Carey says, “was that he would deny it to us because Don and I became friends with Nate.

Carey says Nate did give them this: Twining was “very concerned” over the loss of pilots chasing UFOs in U.S. skies. Nate told him his father was even directly involved with a scramble over WPAFB, and shouted “Get them out of there, get them out of there!” when an intercept started spinning out of control. That encounter, according to Nate, resulted in the death of a fighter ace who’d been shot down in World War II. “But I got a list of aces who’d been shot down in World War II,” Carey says, “and I couldn’t find any record of anything like this happening to any of them. The only thing I could figure is, he must’ve gotten it confused with the Mantell case.”

Thus, another flickering Roswell candle reaches the bottom of its nub. “Not only are almost all the people who were there gone, their kids are dying out, too. And in some cases, even the grandkids. We’re at the end of the trail of witnesses.”

“I can’t say anything about that or I’ll get in trouble,” Carey says. “Just, stay tuned.”

OK.

]]>December 4, 2013Ditch the report and just say 'aircraft'http://devoid.blogs.heraldtribune.com/14253/ditch-the-report-and-just-say-aircraft/
http://devoid.blogs.heraldtribune.com/14253/ditch-the-report-and-just-say-aircraft/#commentsDitch the report and just say 'aircraft'Billy CoxGood news — Jimmie Robinson is still alive. If only people didn’t keep misspelling his first name.

Last time out, De Void visited Robinson’s only blogpost, about being an eyewitness to the famous Tremonton UFOs 60-plus years ago. De Void had a few followup questions, but some apparently ancient contact links were busted and the trail was cold for the retired astronomer named “Jimmy Robinson.” But as the relentless Frank Warren of The UFO Chronicles pointed out, maybe one "Jimmie Robinson" of Las Cruces, N.M., was the guy.

Turns out. “I’ve always spelled my name with an I-E,” Robinson, 87, said during a Wednesday morning phoner. “The mistake was on their end,” he added, referring to the web site listing his last known whereabouts.

At any rate — here’s what’s interesting. Not only did Robinson apparently see, in real time, what would become one of the most thoroughly government-vetted films of the early UFO era, he also — same year, 1952 — claims to have witnessed a second daylight incident that attracted intense federal scrutiny in Arizona. This one involved a B-36 bomber that was approached and paced by a pair of shiny round objects for several minutes. Every crew member saw what happened, and the pilot was so rattled he requested and received permission to make an unscheduled landing at Davis-Monthan AFB outside Tucson. Physicist James McDonald, one of the true heroes of that distant age, reported that the Davis-Monthan UFO-desk officer saw it himself, took detailed individual crew testimony, and compiled “the thickest [document] he ever filed on a UFO.” Unfortunately, the Air Force managed to lose that raw report, and its brief Blue Book analysis attributed the B-36 encounter to a one-word suspect: “Aircraft.” Which, probably, is technically accurate.

Robinson, a University of Arizona astronomy major, was alerted to the encounter by the distinctive racket of B-36’s 10 engines (4 jet, 6 piston). He remembers seeing one UFO, not two, but he wouldn’t forget the sight. “The plane was just north of me and it was heading west, toward Los Angeles,” he recalled. “It was definitely something round, but all I saw was the shaded side, the silhouette. I’m standing there watching the plane and this thing approaches it and disappears on the north side of it, behind the fuselage. I’m waiting for it to reappear, but it never does. I guess that's because it stayed in a fixed position off the wing.”

Robinson would spend time at the White Sands Missile Range as well as New Mexico State University, where he would join a "photographic planetary patrol" led by the renowned Clyde Tombaugh, discoverer of Pluto. Tombaugh had his own UFO sighting, in 1949, which he shared with Robinson. It was a brief encounter, nocturnal, maybe 3 seconds duration, and “it was peculiar, he couldn't explain it,” Robinson said, “but he wasn’t going to say it was a spaceship or anything like that.”

Robinson, however, declined to share his own sighting with Tombaugh. After all, friends and family ridiculed him when he told them about Tremonton. And there was the astronomical instrumentation college professor who laid down the law to a class of impressionable undergrads: There would be no discussion of UFOs in this course because descriptions of their capabilities were impossible.

“Oh, he was very emphatic about that, and he scared the heck out of me,” Robinson said.

But in his mind’s eye, the Tremonton UFO formations linger, vivid and eternally confusing, visible for maybe two minutes as they crossed from horizon-to-horizon. Two minutes is an eternity for UFO sightings.

“After I saw that [Delbert Newhouse] movie, it turned out we were something like 800 miles apart,” Robinson said, “which would’ve made a simultaneous sighting impossible. You can figure it out, it would’ve been way too high for me to see. You can’t even see the space shuttle when it comes overhead for a landing. But the ones I saw were doing the same movements as in the movie. Two of them were circling each other but maintaining a constant speed, and their movements were very precise, very machine-like. One of them peeled off from the group and went in the opposite direction, the same as it did in the movie. And they were so clear and bright. Airplanes are painted white, but we usually see the shadowed underside. These thing were perfectly white, and I can’t explain that. Maybe they were lit internally, I don’t know.”

Someday, Robinson says, he’ll get around to blogging about the B-36. He chuckles at the Blue Book’s “Aircraft” dispensation of the case, and the lost records. “It isn’t scientific,” says the old astronomer. “When it comes to UFOs, a lot of scientists become unscientific.”